"Meet the 'Ghost Opioids': 10 Times More Lethal than Fentanyl and Elusive in Their Deadly Strike"

A DEADLY new drug 10 times more dangerous than fentanyl that can kill with a sand-sized grain has been linked to a surge in fatal overdoses.

Drug developers are concocting new narcotics in clandestine Chinese labs in a bid to dodge crackdowns on synthetic opioids, some of which are 500 times stronger than heroin and have left more than 1,000 in Britain dead .

An increasingly deadly type of synthetic opioids known as orphines have caused dozens of fatal overdoses across more than 21 states, according to the US Department of Justice.

But experts fear the true number of deaths is higher because they only show up in specialist analysis.

First created in the 1960s to treat severe pain, orphines were taken off the market in 2004 after a string of overdoses.

But the reappeared in the drug supply in 2020 – and orphines have seen a resurgence in recent months.

Orphines have claimed 22 lives in the UK already, according to the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS), as authorities race to try and keep up with new types of orphines.

Chris Thomas, whose team were some of the first to track the drugs, told The Sun the death toll from the new drugs is “absolutely under-reported”.

Thomas, Chief Administrative Officer at Knox County Regional Forensic Center, , said: “You can’t fight the war you don’t know. If there is something new in our community, we need to know it. Law enforcement needs to know it. The public needs to know it.

“The public needs to be warned that somebody has put something in the supply chain.”

In September last year, his team was presented with a confusing case.

A person died of a suspected overdose, but investigators had found only a small amount of drugs in their system – not enough to kill.

The death could have been signed off based on small amounts of other drugs in the person’s system – but Thomas said it would have been “a disservice”.

Pathologists weren’t content to sign the death off as an overdose without finding out what drug had caused it, so it was sent for specialist analysis.

Thomas said the results showed the presence of an “extremely rare” drug – cychlorphine, from the orphines family.

The drug is so new that most toxicology labs still can’t detect it, he said.

And experts warned it is nearly ten times more powerful than fentanyl.

Cychlorphine doesn’t show up on standard drug test strips or routine opioid urine screens.

It is often found as white, brown or beige powders and in tablets, according to UN reports.

It has also been found mixed into heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and medetomidine.

Fake pharmaceuticals such as Xanax, Percocet, Dilaudid, and OxyContin have also been found to contain the deadly drug.

Orphines are a group of synthetic opioids, concocted to evade drug bans against fentanyl in China and shipped across the world.

A crackdowns on heroin production in 2022 led to a huge spike in popularity of “designer drugs” – such as synthetic opioids like fentanyl – made in Chinese labs.

China came down hard on labs pumping out the deadly drug – but they began to tweak the composition of their to get around bans.

They made more deadly drugs, including . They are sold on and as well as being mixed into other drugs like .

When nitazenes were banned in China, chemists started concocting drugs in the orphine family.

Thomas said: “Suppliers and distributors were trying to find something to fill that void. Cychlorphine was found as a very cheap alternative and it was mixed with fentanyl.”

Although cychlorphine is often mixed with other drugs, it can kill on its own.

Even a dose the size of a grain of sand can cause a deadly overdose.

Thomas said: “The average amount of fentanyl in an overdose is between, say 18 to 35 nanograms a millilitre.

“This was coming in at 0.05 nanograms a millilitre. Not even an eraser head’s tip of powder is enough to be completely fatal in these cases.”

Thomas said one of the dangers of orphines are that overdoses involving the new drug cannot be treated with – a life-saving medication used as an “antidote” to opioid overdoses.

He explained: “Think of your central nervous system like a lifeline.

“This drug tries to squeeze that central nervous system to cut off oxygen, blood flow, and introduce bradycardia, all sorts of respiratory and cardiac issues.

“ is that shield that comes in. Narcan tries to block that opioid from binding to that receptor and that works with fentanyl.

“The problem is fentanyl we know is 200 times more powerful than heroin. Cyclorphine is almost 10 times more powerful than fentanyl.

“The Narcan itself cannot block it with a single dose.

“There are medical professionals that say you should use multiple doses or it may be ineffective.”

Dr Phillip Berry, an international drug trade expert at the UN Office on Drugs and , said orphines and other synthetic opioids like nitazenes can be bought online and shipped to the UK with ease, including via social media.

And orphines, nitazenes and other synthetic opioids can easily be shipped in small package – evading detection from authorities.

He told The Sun: “Ordering nitazenes online – whether on the open web, dark web or social media platforms – and having them shipped to the UK was relatively straightforward.

“Most nitazenes and types of synthetic opioids arrived via fast parcel and postal services.”

The problem for authorities is that as soon as one drug is banned, another new one springs up in its place.

“Chinese chemical and pharmaceutical companies are developing and trading new synthetic opioids not currently banned, including those from the orphine family,” Dr Berry said.

Even if orphines are banned in China, rogue actors are likely to find a new compound to sell, he added.

Dr Berry explained: “New drugs, including synthetic opioids, are constantly emerging.

“Whenever a new synthetic opioid is banned, chemists simply tweak the formula to create a new unregulated compound.”

Unregulated compounds are hard to test – because scientists don’t know what they’re looking for.

In Knox County, a man was found dead with white powder, thumbnail-size bags, a dollar bill, straws and a hollow pen littering his bathroom.

When his blood was tested, the only substances found were nicotine and caffeine.

When specialist testing was done, cylorphine was found to have killed him.

Knox County has now recorded 60 deaths related to orphines.

Not all areas can afford the specialist tests, leading experts to believe that deaths involving orphines are under-reported.

In the EU, 31 deaths have been linked to the drug.

In the UK, 22 people have died from orphine-related overdoses, NDTMS stats show.

In November, the drug killed three people in just ten days in one London borough.

Streets Kitchen coordinator Jon Glackin : “People are dying in Camden needlessly due to lack of information.

“We are shocked that, with so many needless deaths, there has been little to no public discussion surrounding these tragedies.”

Thomas said public awareness of the drugs is vital, saying: “You may be suffering from substance abuse. You may be having a tough time.

“But you may believe that you’ve got a tolerance to fentanyl now at this point. And you’re feeling sick. We don’t want you to die.”

He warned: “It’s never been more dangerous to take street-level drugs than it is in 2026.”